f the enemy. His risk was greater than that which others ran.
For he could not be persuaded either to encumber his feeble frame with
a cuirass, or to hide the ensigns of the garter. He thought his star a
good rallying point for his own troops, and only smiled when he was told
that it was a good mark for the enemy. Many fell on his right hand and
on his left. Two led horses, which in the field always closely followed
his person, were struck dead by cannon shots. One musket ball passed
through the curls of his wig, another through his coat; a third
bruised his side and tore his blue riband to tatters. Many years later
greyhaired old pensioners who crept about the arcades and alleys of
Chelsea Hospital used to relate how he charged at the head of Galway's
horse, how he dismounted four times to put heart into the infantry, how
he rallied one corps which seemed to be shrinking; "That is not the way
to fight, gentlemen. You must stand close up to them. Thus, gentlemen,
thus." "You might have seen him," an eyewitness wrote, only four days
after the battle, "with his sword in his hand, throwing himself upon the
enemy. It is certain that one time, among the rest, he was seen at the
head of two English regiments, and that he fought seven with these two
in sight of the whole army, driving them before him above a quarter of
an hour. Thanks be to God that preserved him." The enemy pressed on him
so close that it was with difficulty that he at length made his way over
the Gette. A small body of brave men, who shared his peril to the last,
could hardly keep off the pursuers as he crossed the bridge. [447]

Never, perhaps, was the change which the progress of civilisation has
produced in the art of war more strikingly illustrated than on that day.
Ajax beating down the Trojan leader with a rock which two ordinary men
could scarcely lift, Horatius defending the bridge against an army,
Richard the Lionhearted spurring along the whole Saracen line without
finding an enemy to stand his assault, Robert Bruce crushing with one
blow the helmet and head of Sir Henry Bohun in sight of the whole array
of England and Scotland, such are the heroes of a dark age. In such an
age bodily vigour is the most indispensable qualification of a warrior.
At Landen two poor sickly beings, who, in a rude state of society, would
have been regarded as too puny to bear any part in combats, were the
souls of two great armies. In some heathen countries they would hav